The present invention relates to a liquid crystal display (LCD).
Liquid crystal displays (LCDs) have a lot of advantages. For example, compared with a cathode ray tube, liquid crystal displays are thinner and have lower energy consumption. Therefore, liquid crystal displays have substituted CRT displays in many fields.
As shown in FIG. 1, a display panel of an existing thin film transistor-liquid crystal display (TFT-LCD) includes an array substrate 12, a color filter substrate 11, and a liquid crystal layer 13 interposed between the array substrate 12 and the color filter substrate 11. The peripheries of the array substrate 12 and the color filter substrate 11 are sealed with a sealant 14. FIG. 1 does not show all configurations of the liquid crystal display for the sake of brevity.
In an existing process of manufacturing a liquid crystal display, after the processes of forming the array substrate and the color filter substrate, it requires to perform a cell assembling process, i.e., a process for assembling the array substrate and the color filter substrate together. The cell assembling process includes steps of: applying an alignment film on the array substrate and the color filter substrate, respectively; curing the alignment film and rubbing the alignment film; then, drop-filling liquid crystal, applying the sealant; assembling the array substrate and the color filter substrate together and curing the sealant; and last, sectioning the assembled array substrate and color substrate so as to form separate liquid crystal cells.
During the above described cell assembling process, if the sealant comes into contact with the liquid crystal before completely cured, the liquid crystal will be polluted. The display quality of the polluted liquid crystal display panel may deteriorate dramatically. Image sticking, especially, line image sticking is liable to occur, especially around the effective display area of the liquid crystal display panel, due to the impurity ions in the sealant, the temperature, and other factors.
Various measures have been adopted to cure the sealant before it comes into contact with the liquid crystal so as to avoid the pollution to the liquid crystal due to the contact between the sealant and the liquid crystal. After the substrates are assembled, there is a short interval from the time when the liquid crystal starts to disperse to the time when the liquid crystal comes into contact with the sealant. In general, the sealant is pre-cured with UV in the short interval to prevent pollution to the liquid crystal by the impurity ions in the sealant when the sealant is in contact with the liquid crystal. However, although the sealant is pre-cured with UV, some impurity ions in the sealant may still enter into the effective display region in the liquid crystal display panel, which deteriorates the display quality of the finished liquid crystal display panel.